Craig Price is the new President of the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (IPENZ).

Mr Price has had a long career with engineering consultancy Beca. He is currently South Island Regional Manager and Chair of Beca’s New Zealand business.

IPENZ currently has a record 19,000 members across all fields of engineering.

Mr Price takes office during a significant period of change for IPENZ, with the organisation adopting a new direction and membership structure.

“This will be another big year of change, as we deliver on our strategies to drive increased credibility and influence for our members.”

Mr Price says he’s passionate about upholding engineering standards. He also wants to see engineers moving beyond technical management into leadership and governance roles, in both business and the wider community.

“Engineers needs to step up and become influencers, not just implementers.

“Problem solving is at the heart of engineering, and engineers can bring this valuable perspective to industry groups and commercial and community boards.”

He has been a strong supporter of Beca’s School Days programme, which gives local high school students the chance to experience a day as a professional consultant in a Beca office.

“Engineering is an energising and challenging profession full of different paths and possibilities. We need to keep attracting the best young talent – and to make sure we support them throughout their careers.”

Mr Price is an IPENZ Fellow and a Chartered Fellow of the Institute of Directors, and is a director of infrastructure services company City Care.

Mr Price will hold office for a year. He succeeds Elena Trout, IPENZ’s second female President.

|  An IPENZ reease  ||   April 7, 2017   |||

Design standards and building laws will be reviewed in response to an investigation into structural damage to Wellington’s Statistics House in the Kaikōura earthquake, Building and Construction Minister Dr Nick Smith says.

Dr Smith today released an independent panel’s findings into the performance of the building during the 14 November 2016 quake, focussing on its design and construction, and the land influences on it.

“The performance of Statistics House in the Kaikōura earthquake was unacceptable and could have caused fatalities. This quake was large and unusually long but a modern building like Statistics House should not have had life-threatening structural damage. The building was designed to the industry practice of the time but this did not fully account for the effects of beam elongation during an earthquake, an issue that was deficient in the Concrete Structures Standard at the time of the design.

“The design flaw is quite specific to highly ductile framed concrete buildings with pre-cast floor slabs and particularly those with multi bay frames. We need to follow up on similarly designed buildings through councils and engineering companies so that where it is a problem, it can be rectified. This has already been done in respect of Wellington as a consequence of the preliminary findings in Statistics House but now needs to be followed up elsewhere. We also need to amend the Concrete Structures Standard to ensure newly designed buildings are adequately designed to cope with beam elongation during long duration earthquakes. This will be done this year.

“A compounding factor was geological basin effects that are not well understood but which have also been observed in other earthquakes internationally. This is not to do with reclaimed land but the amplification of ground shaking in a basin. This phenomena is similar to the way sea waves respond to a wall in an enclosed bay. This is an area of seismic science that needs further research, particularly in respect of Wellington, and to be considered as part of a review of the Earthquake Actions Standard.

“There is a building law issue that arises from this report on which I have asked officials to report. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has limited powers to follow up on design deficiencies like those identified in this report beyond those specifically provided for following civil emergencies. This means MBIE cannot require building owners to follow up on these sorts of potentially serious technical problems. I have asked MBIE to report on whether additional powers are needed in the Building Act.

“New Zealand is at the cutting edge of international seismic design standards but we have not yet solved all of the potential ways a building can fail. Most buildings in Wellington performed well despite the ferocity of the Kaikōura earthquake. We need to take the opportunity following such earthquakes to learn as much as we can and to further strengthen our standards and systems to improve building safety for the future.

“These detailed issues over the performance of modern buildings are important for improving design standards but they should not divert attention away from the far more significant risk to life of older buildings. The Kaikōura earthquake was sufficiently distant from Wellington that the city did not get the dangerous high-frequency shaking that poses the greatest risk to life.

“The largest safety gains for Wellington are to be made in the initiatives requiring unreinforced masonry facades and parapets to be tied back over the next year and all earthquake-prone buildings under 34 per cent of Building Code to be upgraded under the new law coming into effect on 1 July.”

The Statistics House investigation report is available at http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/building-construction/safety-quality/statistics-house-investigation

|  A Beehive release  |  March 31, 2017   |||

Engineers say results from the Statistics House investigation will help build more resilient buildings.

New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE) President Peter Smith says every earthquake provides new information on how to improve building design.

“Investigations like this are crucial to making our buildings safer. We need to gain access to detailed information on how other buildings performed, to help widen understanding of whole-of-building performance.

“Statistics House illustrated how different factors can combine in unexpected and unprecedented ways.

“In Wellington, this earthquake most severely affected mid-height buildings. Because the earthquake was so far away, only low-frequency waves made it to the Capital. These waves resonated with mid-height buildings, which combined with the earthquake’s long duration meant mid-height buildings experienced severe shaking.

“Basically these flexible, modern buildings experienced a design-level earthquake – an earthquake that met or exceeded what they were designed to withstand.

“At the same time, shorter and stiffer buildings experienced an earthquake that wasn’t even one-third of Code. But these earthquake-prone buildings still pose a significant risk to public safety, especially in an earthquake centred closer to Wellington. It’s really important that vulnerable features on these buildings, such as parapets and facades, are secured during this time of heightened seismic risk.”

Structural Engineering Society (SESOC) spokesperson Paul Campbell says the Statistics House investigation has revealed that buildings with key characteristics may be vulnerable in an earthquake that’s both large and long.

“In a large and long-duration earthquake, these key characteristics are flexible frames in combination with precast floors.

“Flexible frames are designed to bend so that the ends of the beams experience controlled damage.

“But the Kaikoura earthquake has confirmed that if an earthquake is strong enough and long enough, the damage can make the beams grow in length. This means the supports for the pre-cast floor system can move too far apart, potentially causing parts of the floor to lose their support and collapse.

“When Statistics House was built, the Building Code did not allow for this combination of factors – but it does now.

“The Canterbury earthquakes led to Building Code changes – and now more changes are likely given what we have learned from the Kaikoura earthquake.

“Engineers will be working with MBIE to further develop detailed guidance on assessing and retrofitting buildings with these characteristics.”

|  An IPENZ release   |   March 31, 2017   |||

SESOC and NZSEE are IPENZ technical groups.

With a new year comes an inevitable update of your CAD package, and that always begs the question, should I keep my license or upgrade? Well, with Autodesk Inventor and the company’s new subscription-based plan, that decision has likely been made for you, and now it’s time to reap the benefits.

Inventor 2018 has been on the market since last week, and for those looking for the latest features in their CAD tools, here’s what you can expect from the latest version of Autodesk’s flagship mechanic design package.

MBE Tools Demanded, MBE Tools Delivered

Demand and model-based engineering (MBE) as a standard CAD paradigm is increasing throughout the design world. Not only are big-time movers and shakers like the DoD insisting that fluency with MBE be a prerequisite for any contractor, the ever-tightening integration between design, prototyping and manufacturing is making MBE coin of the realm.

To give users the tools they’ll need to meet this new design focus, Inventor comes equipped for model-based design (MBD) tools that make it easy to annotate models with tolerance information, critical dimensions and manufacturing notes so that a project can move from modeling to CMM and CAM in a flash. In addition, Inventor users can output 3D PDF files so that design information can be effectively communicated to manufacturers off-site.

Interoperability Expanded

Designers today have to deal with a number of variables when building a product. One of the most consistent of those variables is that a team will likely be interacting with a number of third-party vendors and, most likely, a few different CAD file formats.

In the past, having to juggle multiple file formats made collaboration with third-party products awkward and time consuming, but in Inventor 2018, the software supports a number of different file flavors and formats, making it easy to leverage the design work that’s already been done by others so that workflows are streamlined.

Customer-Driven Enhancements Round out 2018

Aside from MBD and interoperability enhancements, the Inventor engineering team has tapped its deep user base to implement over 50 Inventor Idea requests into 2018. Whether it’s improvements to such essential features as “Chamfer,” “Extrude” or “Hole” commands, Inventor’s refinement is reaching a level that’s difficult to match by other CAD programs. But modeling features aren’t the only aspects of the software that have seen improvements thanks to user input. In Inventor 2018, the “Measure” tool has been simplified and improved to make it easier to use, and bill of materials (BOM) and parts list sort orders have been made easier to organize based on user input commands.

For more information about Inventor 2018, visit CADPROSystems

|  An engineering.com release - visit site for images & videos  |  March 28, 2017   |||

NZ’s investment in infrastructure creating jobs

Global engineering and advisory firm Aurecon, will be recruiting approximately 30 graduates around the country[1] in 2017, as part of its annual graduate recruitment programme.

With the release of the latest instalment of the Government’s Ten Year Capital Intentions Plan (CIP) in 2016, the Government is showing its commitment to a pipeline of $100.9 billion worth of infrastructure projects over the next decade in New Zealand.

Aurecon’s New Zealand Regional Director, Carl Devereux, said, “While the majority of the investment over the past few years has been in road infrastructure and the restoration of key services in earthquake affected areas such as Canterbury and Kaikoura, there has also been good investment in major infrastructure projects such as the Auckland City Rail Link.”

“In addition, New Zealand has seen continued economic growth, which bodes well for those working in the engineering industry.”

Aurecon is looking for new staff to support a range of infrastructure projects, including the Auckland City Rail Link, a series of dairy plant projects for Fonterra, and the Northland Bridges project.

||  An Aurecon release  |  March 22, 2017  |||

Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat;

Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that!

Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,

But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.

-From Rudyard Kipling’s The Sons of Martha, 1907

For as long as humans have been around, we’ve had an obsession with being first. Hillary and Norgay are immortalized as the first to conquer Everest. Neil Armstrong will forever be remembered as the first to walk on the moon. And any internet comment section will demonstrate the compulsion to claim this same singular achievement: First!

Naturally, we can’t help but wonder who it was that pioneered our profession.

Who was the first engineer? Let’s review some of the candidates.

Imhotep (2650 – 2600 BCE)

A statuette of Imhotep on display in the Louvre. (Photo courtesy of Hu Totya.)

Imhotep was chancellor to the Egyptian pharaoh Djoser, and his engineering claim to fame is the design of the Pyramid of Djoser. Located in the Egyptian necropolis of Saqqara, the Pyramid of Djoser was the first of the now-famous Egyptian pyramids.

The Pyramid of Djoser is a step pyramid, consisting of six mastabas (sloping rectangular prisms) layered one on top of another, in contrast to the smooth face of the more familiar Great Pyramid of Giza. The limestone-based step pyramid reaches 62 meters (203 feet) high, with a base measuring approximately 109 by 125 meters (358 by 410 feet).

> > >  Continue here to view the full article with images  |  March 16, 2017  ||

AECOM, the world’s biggest engineering firm, plans to spend billions of dollars on acquisitions amid expectations for growing U.S. funding of road, rail, water and energy projects, Chief Executive Officer Michael Burke said.

“We’ll look to be the largest infrastructure firm in the world -- both construction and design,” Burke said Monday in an interview at Bloomberg’s Los Angeles bureau. “I’ve got to spend $3.5 billion, and we think it’ll be spent on good, solid strategic acquisitions. We will grow organically also.”

Infrastructure spending by the U.S. government is likely to grow because it’s one of the few priorities shared by President Donald Trump, Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and voters, Burke said. Trump told Congress last week he wants to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure, a proposal Burke expects to be detailed later this year but that will take years to implement.

“I think a plan will be put in place before the end of 2017,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview later Monday with Vonnie Quinn. “And then it will be implemented over the course of ’18 and ’19 and forward.”

The last major acquisition by Los Angeles-based AECOM, which reported $17.4 billion in revenue in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, was URS Corp. for $5.6 billion. The 2014 deal “created synergies” of about $325 million, exceeding projections, while also helping AECOM win more bids because of expanded capabilities, Burke said. AECOM has landed $12.3 billion of new projects over its two most recent quarters, he said, putting it on pace to surpass last year’s revenue.

> > >  A Bloomberg release continue to full article

Lincoln Electric Holdings Inc. has signed a Memorandum of Understanding and entered into exclusive negotiations to acquire Air Liquide’s subsidiary, Air Liquide Welding.

Air Liquide Welding is subject to a definitive agreement between the parties and customary conditions and provisions for a transaction of this type, including the “information-consultation” process with the employee representative bodies and the applicable competition authorities’ approval.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC is acting as the financial adviser and Jones Day is acting as legal adviser to Lincoln Electric.

|  A n AMN release  |  march 06, 2017  ||

High-tech company Rapid Advanced Manufacturing (RAM3D) in New Zealand has opened a new facility in Tauranga’s Tauriko Business Park, with the aim of making metal additive manufacturing more accessible to the Australian and New Zealand markets. RAM has been collaborating with global engineering technologies company Renishaw and, as a result, is using several AM250 metal additive manufacturing systems in its Tauranga facility.

RAM3D was spun out of the research organisation Titanium Industry Development Association (now TiDA) and it has the biggest Australasian centre for 3D metal printing. RAM3D’s new facility allows companies from a range of sectors, including aerospace, defence, consumer and industrial, to explore the benefits of metal additive manufacturing.

RAM3D works with its clients to improve the design of production parts and prototypes. It also uses additive manufacturing to make these parts in a more efficient and cost-effective manner. RAM3D is collaborating with companies as far away as Singapore and the products manufactured at the Tauranga centre are used around the world.

The diversity of the parts RAM3D manufactures ranges from titanium knives used by the Team Emirates America's Cup crew to customised handlebar extensions for the New Zealand Olympics cycling team, as well as titanium lugs for high-end Australian custom bike maker Bastion Cycles.

“The additive manufacturing market is on the rise in New Zealand and Australia,” explained Warwick Downing, Managing Director of Rapid Advanced Manufacturing. “This growth is fuelled by realism, not hype; the enquiries we are getting show a clear understanding of the potential of design for additive manufacturing. This is an encouraging trend. We believe this trend is being driven by industry collaborations that facilitate a better understanding of the technology, such as the one between RAM3D and Renishaw.

“The key to the successful and sustainable implementation of additive manufacturing into the production process is to have a good understanding of the technology and work in partnership with suppliers and clients.”

“RAM3D strongly believes that additive manufacturing is a competitive production technology with an unprecedented potential for industry,” continued Mike Brown, Managing Director of Renishaw Oceania. “The company’s unique combination of skills, facilities and experience make it an industry leader in this part of the world. It is a privilege for Renishaw to collaborate with such a key player in the market to grow the region’s adoption of additive manufacturing.”

RAM3D is planning to continue its growth and accommodate for 20 metal additive manufacturing systems by the end of 2020. The company is keen to work with a wider range of clients from different industries who want to explore the benefits and potential of metal additive manufacturing.

| A RAM release  |  March 02, 2017  ||

British engineer and inventor James Dyson has announced he is increasing his brand's UK presence tenfold with the opening of a second campus.

Dyson made the announcement today at the company's global headquarters on the outskirts of Malmesbury, a historic market town in Wiltshire, southwest England.

The new campus will sit on 517 acres of space nearby, on former Ministry of Defence land at Hullavington. Dyson has said this will expand the company's UK footprint tenfold.

"After 25 years of UK growth, and continuing expansion globally, we are fast outgrowing our Malmesbury Campus," said James Dyson. "The 517 acre Hullavington Campus is an investment for our future, creating a global hub for our research and development endeavours."

"It will enable us to continue creating world-class products and jobs right here in the Cotswolds."

British engineering and innovation are a passion of Dyson's. After being the only prominent designer to argue in favour of Brexit last year, he committed £15 million over the next five years to tackle the UK's engineering skills gap.

He is also opening a new university, the Dyson Institute of Technology, this September on the recently expanded Dyson Campus in Malmesbury. It will feed Dyson's engineering workforce, which he hopes to double from 3,000 to 6,000 by 2020.Embargoed: New Dyson campusDyson's Malmesbury Campus was recently expanded by Wilkinson Eyre, adding a mirrored laboratory and sports hangar

Dyson's announcement was welcomed by British Prime Minister Theresa May, who has made the creative industries, engineering and technology central to the country's post-Brexit growth plan.

"This investment is a vote of confidence in our modern industrial strategy and our determination to cement the UK's position as a world leader in high-tech engineering," she said. "Dyson's exporting strength and commitment to creating jobs in Britain is a real success story that demonstrates the opportunity that our plan to create a truly global Britain can present."

"It is also good to see that the site chosen by James Dyson will bring former MoD land back into productive use."

The site includes world war two hangars, which will be restored as part of the project. Site preparations for phase one of the Hullavington Campus begin next week.

The Hullavington announcement comes two weeks after Dyson opened a new Technology Centre in Singapore. The centre focuses on developing connected-home technologies.

|  A deZEEN release  |  March 02, 2017  ||